An efficient mixed-mode representation of sparse tensors

Abstract

The Compressed Sparse Fiber (CSF) representation for sparse tensors is a generalization of the Compressed Sparse Row (CSR) format for sparse matrices. For a tensor with d modes, typical tensor methods such as CANDECOMP/PARAFAC decomposition (CPD) require a sequence of d tensor computations, where efficient memory access with respect to different modes is required for each of them. The straightforward solution is to use d distinct representations of the tensor, with each one being efficient for one of the d computations. However, a d-fold space overhead is often unacceptable in practice, especially with memory-constrained GPUs. In this paper, we present a mixed-mode tensor representation that partitions the tensor's nonzero elements into disjoint sections, each of which is compressed to create fibers along a different mode. Experimental results demonstrate that better performance can be achieved while utilizing only a small fraction of the space required to keep d distinct CSF representations.